Tapping the admiral

Spent this morning at Dutch Bend Library. It was dead quiet, which is something I'd already picked up from its performance stats.

They've never really recovered from having the staff from Catty Library dumped on them with nothing to do for nearly all last year. A typical bit of library management: you or I would have taken the opportunity to free staff up for training and/or doing additional activities and events in the library; all those things we keep saying we can't do because we haven't got the staff. Julia had nothing planned, which is precisely what they did. Stuck at a loose end, the staff got in each other's way, got on each other's nerves and in the end Daisy and Lettie found themselves spending more time managing the consequences than they were keeping on top of the daily 'to do' list. The results were inevitable but it's still a shock to see it in real life.

And the more shocking because I know that staff here have made three no-cost suggestions for trying to turn things round and all have been vetoed recently by Policy Team.

"It's like some forgotten outpost of a lost civilsation," says Edith, one of the Assistants.

"What's Julia doing about it?" I asked optmistically.

"We've not seen her since Christmas. Mind you, she always knows when somebody's moved something on her desk."